Steps Toward Improving Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can increase and evolve over time depending on a persons desire to learn and grow. Emotional Intelligence is absolutely essential in the formation, development, maintenance, and enhancement of close personal relationships (Ni, 2014). Emotional intelligence affects both professional and personal life. In both cases, emotional intelligence can make or break relationships, whether itd be personal ones, like the relationship one has with a close friend, or a relationship with a client. Emotional intelligence can set the mood in any workplace setting and affect ones ability to communicate with their colleagues. In todays world, the importance of emotional intelligence cannot be undervalued, specially when so much depends on teamwork, compromise, and negotiation. Fortunately, if a person doesnt possess high emotional intelligence, there are steps they can follow to improve it. 1. Practice observing how you feel and behave Many of us lead busy lives and it becomes easy to become unfamiliar with our emotions. To reconnect with your emotions, pay attention to how a certain emotion makes you feel physically. Emotions bring sensations in our bodies. Feel your emotions and observe how you act/react when youre experiencing them. In doing so, youll be able to see how the way you behave when experiencing such emotions affects your day-to-day life. Becoming aware and more conscious of how we react to our emotions makes it easier to manage them. 2. Positive thinking Positive thinking plays a big role to become motivated. Motivation is an important skill of emotional intelligence. Seeing setbacks and problems as a learning opportunity instead of an error on your part will allow you to remain motivated. Its also crucial to surround yourself with positive, optimistic people. Negative people can only bring negative effects into your life, while positive people will have a good effect on you. 3. Be empathetic To be empathetic is to listen. You must learn to let someone talk without putting your own issues first. Dont interrupt and absorb their situation and how it makes them feel before you react. This isnt only important for workplace relationships, but personal ones as well. Being empathetic will allow you to resolve situations in effective ways. 4. Be open to constructive criticism First things first, dont take constructive criticism personally. It is not an insult, its solely someone elses observation that they think can be improved based on the interactions theyve had with you. Whether they are on the right track or not, be respectful of their good intentions and know that youll be able to determine how valid their feedback is and what youll do about it in the end.5. Ask for helpDont be reluctant to ask for help when you need it. Everyone is bound to come face to face with certain challenges. The way you react to these challenges either set you up for success or break you. If you feel overwhelmed, just breathe and remember that you have people around you that can help. After all, thats the intelligent to do. Imagine that you faced the challenge alone and it ended up worse than if you had just stopped and asked someone. In that moment youd probably be wishing you had done so. As soon as you begin to implement asking for help in your life, your mindset will shift, your priorities will change and you'll have the ability to focus on you for a change (Rozzio, 2017).Personally, I could improve on seeking help. There are times when I feel like I need do it all in an effort to appear as if I have everything under control whether its my career, relationships, etc. However, I eventually find myself being swallowed by responsibility and I need to admit to myself that no matter how great I think I am at something, even the best people need help. All in all, theres areas of my emotional intelligence that can use improvement and I try to grow in those areas every day.

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